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New Yorker slashed in random attack sues as suspect freed

A young woman whose face was slashed in a random attack on a New York street is suing the city for $13.7m after her suspected assailant, who has a history of violence, was released from a mental institution.

Brooklyn resident Amanda Morris, 25, was left disfigured when Kari Bazemore, 42, allegedly snuck up behind her and sliced her under the nose on January 6 this year.

Video of the incident, which happened at 5:30am as Ms Morris was walking to work, shows just how cruel and unexpected the attack was, with the man suspected to be Bazemore casually sidling up to his victim before ripping into her with the blade.

"I felt like I got punched in the face," Ms Morris told the New York Post at the time.

"It was like, 'oh that's weird, why would someone punch me?' Suddenly blood was all over my hands, and I started crying…

"He wanted to scar me, and that's why he went for my face."

Bazemore, a paranoid schizophrenic who has been arrested 31 times, had already assaulted another woman that month, police allege, cutting the face of his victim so severely that she needed 150 stitches.

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He is also accused of multiple other, similar attacks, including one in which he allegedly smashed a 43-year-old woman in the face with a bottle and called her a "white bitch".

But now Bazemore is back on the streets after being discharged from a Health and Hospitals Corporation facility.

As the New York Daily News reports, Bazemore's own sister had called two institutions he'd attended after he was released following a stint in care last autumn, telling them he was off his meds and was likely to become violent.

The hospitals told her to call the police, who told her there was nothing they could do unless he had committed a crime.

Bazemore has been in custody since his alleged attack on Ms Morris, and faces a host of charges over other incidents.

Ms Morris's complaint, according to the city's Law Department, "is under review".